Now that the XAT is over, the time to dive fully into WAT-GD-PI prep has come. But how does one go about it? It all seems like a vast sea with no beginning and no end. A single post covering all three — WAT, GD & PI — will be unwieldy, to say the least, so I will do a series of posts that will help you kick-start your prep for the second stage.
I have always preferred a test without sectional time limits since it tests a crucial quality required for management — optimizing resources to achieve maximum return on investment. In this case, the resources are your own skills, and the investment is your time. So, how does one go about using the 170 minutes on the XAT?
This piece on Decision Making has really expanded and I hope as I begin to write this post that this will be the closing piece that concludes this and this.
In the previous post,we discussed how Decision Making can be the undoing of XAT aspirants and tried to understand the nature of questions that come up on the section. We took up two sets from the Decision Making section of a past XAT and discussed a structure to answer DM questions. In this post, we shall look at the remaining questions from that paper.
One of the most tedious and inscrutable sections that you will find across all management entrance tests, Decision Making has been the nemesis of many a XAT aspirant. A lot of factors contribute towards DM possibly being the biggest stumbling block on the XAT. But none is bigger than the fact the amount of time any test-taker would have spent preparing for DM when compared to any other section is minuscule. This coupled with the dislike and unease most aspirants have towards reading, and the extremely subjective nature of questions ensures that DM ends up becoming the deal-breaker as far as the XAT is concerned.
As a test, XAT is possibly as tough, if not tougher, than the CAT with a unique section and many unique question-types. This post lays out a prep strategy for the XAT.
Be it the day of the CAT or be it when the final admit results come out it is not easy to be a mentor — on one hand you are happy for students who crack the exam and get admitted and on the other hand you feel sad for those who have a bad test day or fail to convert. The toughest thing was always to meet a student who was happy, knowing that the one waiting outside was sad. So with the years, one develops a certain equanimity since one cannot be so happy that one is not able to empathize with the ones who are having a hard time and one also cannot get so bogged down by sadness that one cannot partake in the joy of the successful. In some cases students just disappear, somehow they take it very personally, that they have failed, they have failed even after reading all the blogs and attending all the sessions, they feel almost as if they have let me down. And I am …
You have a few days left, and some of you might still be awaiting answers to some questions, such as whether you should listen to what happened in the earlier slots, what you should do if you know you might not get sleep Saturday night, etc. A few years ago, I made an audio clip (initially shot as a video) that answered all of these queries, queries that deal specifically with the three days leading up to the test, and all the pending questions. As on every Friday before the CAT day, we are doing a stress buster session — Anything But CAT. We will host five rooms where we will discuss specific non-CAT topics of interest: Cricket & Tennis, Football and other sports, Harry Potter & Fantasy Books, Music Room, and Quizzing. All IMS students will receive a link for the same.
From very early on in our lives, we are exposed (or subjected) to this word called TEST. As we enter the higher grades, the role that TESTS play or are supposed to play in our lives steadily increases. If we look back, for most of us, tests have always been part of a trinity; they have always been concomitant with two other things — fear and prayer. At some point in time, all of us, when faced with a test (including yours truly), have felt at least a sliver of fear running through our bodies before a test, and even the most unbelieving of us has muttered a tiny little prayer under our breath.
One of the biggest questions that you need to ask yourself is how do you think of yourself with respect to life? Do you think of yourself as an individual who makes life happen or to whom life happens? Do you see yourself at the doing end of things or at the receiving end of things? Do you believe or do you hope?
The CAT Writer 